It was an opportunity missed.
Xaverian’s boys basketball team positioned itself to beat one of Brooklyn and Queens’s best squads, but it couldn’t finish the job. The Clippers tied the score against Archbishop Molloy with 1:12 remaining in Catholic boy’s basketball on Jan. 27, but a comeback slipped through Xaverian’s hands, and it came up short 56–50. The loss snapped a four-game winning streak that included beating three-time defending city champion Christ the King. Chalk it up to sloppy play, one Clipper said.
“We had a chance to win the game, just too many mistakes,” Clippers senior forward Nyontay Wisseh said. “It’s a learning process. It’s still early in the season.”
A Khalil Rhodes three-pointer tied the game with just over a minute left, but Molloy freshman Cole Anthony answered with three of his own — he scored six of the Stanners’ final 10 points.
Wisseh, who scored a game-high 21 points, made two free throws after just missing a three-point play on the next possession. Molloy caught a break when Justin Cole pulled in a long rebound after a free-throw miss by Dominick Priolo and made two shots of his own from the charity stripe to put the Stanners up 52–48 with 19.9 seconds remaining.
“The ball come out fast,” Wisseh said. “We should have gotten that rebound.”
Molloy’s frontcourt took control of the contest. Moses Brown, a 6-foot-10 center, scored nine of his 13 points in the first half, and Isaac Grant tallied 12 points and 11 rebounds.
They helped Molloy (13–2, 9–1) build a 32–23 lead in the third quarter. The Stanners’ length and shot-blocking ability intimidated Xaverian’s drivers, and the Clippers attacked the basket with less aggressiveness, which also limited their usual effectiveness in transition.
“Our conversion in transition was very low,” Xaverian coach Jack Alesi said. “We wanted to push the ball on them. We got all the breaks we wanted. A lot of it was their doing. They blocked a lot of shots and made plays.”
Xaverian (10–4, 6–4) did answer with an 11–3 run to end the third quarter and trim Molloy’s advantage to just 33–31 going into the fourth. A 10–3 spurt in the final quarter gave the Clippers a chance to steal a win, but it could not finish the job.
“We ran a little more of a stable type of offense,” Alesi said. “I thought we played really well in the second half.”
